No oddly enough. Despite the appearance of bowling the world over, Emirates offer flights to 127 destinations in 74 countries, with four more destinations to be commenced in the next few months. That will add two countries to their list as two destinations are in countries already served.

edit: I'd call it a tie between LH and TK. If you take OS and LX into account, it brings another 8 destinations, so the new total is 92. Most people would agree that Northern Cyprus is not a souvereign state, so it is indeed a draw.

Quoting Quokkas (Reply 8):No oddly enough. Despite the appearance of bowling the world over, Emirates offer flights to 127 destinations in 74 countries, with four more destinations to be commenced in the next few months. That will add two countries to their list as two destinations are in countries already served.

Ok gee I didnt know that. Seems to me that every airport you go in the world you see a EK tail. I wounder if TK will come down to Australia? I thought I may have read on here a year or two ago that TK was looking at SYD I wounder if they are still playing with that idea and could they come down here to MEL, big Turkish populations in bosth Sydney and Melbourne.

Despite its size in ASKs - thanks mainly to an all widebody fleet and almost entirely medium to long haul operation - EK is not as big as some European or US airlines in many aspects. That includes fleet size, no of destinations, no of countries, no of daily flights.

Anyway, I would rather see a better coverage of some larger countries (China, India, Brazil, USA, Canada) than more countries. Thankfully that is on the way - with announcements for USA & Canada and plans for India and China.

That routing would get the distinction of the being the first to be closed in over a decade. Seriously, not enough pax to take a plane to Australia from Turkey. And connecting pax would rather fly QF/EK/EY/TG/SQ/CX...

Quoting TK1244 (Reply 14):between LH and TK? No tie!! It's only a tie when you compare LH group as whole and TK. But doing it all alone is a better achievement than doing the same with multiple airlines

Well, my argument here is that the reason why LH does not serve Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovakia or Armenia is because OS does. These destinations fit into the VIE hub, which -- being honest -- is also an LH hub.

I think that's because EK focuses on the big hubs and trunk routes. And that's where most of us fly through or see pictures in aviation articles etc. In that sense, EK widebodies are indeed everywhere.

But if you go out of the way and to the regional and secondary cities, there will be an entirely different picture. For example, take Central Asia. You could hardly find an EK or QR destination there ... but the region is spectacularly covered by TK. Similarly, for eastern Europe or the Balkans ... EK serves only a few. Whereas, QR and TK flies their narrow bodies to almost every capital city in that region.

Quoting MaverickM11 (Reply 17):Congrats I guess, although it's pretty clear TK was building its network to hit this number, rather than build it rationally.

It seems so ... you are right But some of them are indeed great destinations as Africa is opening up more and more. TK's Africa map is already impressive and will be hard to match by EK ... QR is following a similar model in Eastern Africa, but not sure how much they can cover in the western part with their narrow bodies.

Quoting Tobias2702 (Reply 9):edit: I'd call it a tie between LH and TK. If you take OS and LX into account, it brings another 8 destinations, so the new total is 92. Most people would agree that Northern Cyprus is not a souvereign state, so it is indeed a draw.

Maybe that's why Merkel and Erdogan decided to call it a draw and suggest "joint management" ... cause they are in a stalemate

Funny how popular they make themselves out to be. But a s**teload of really nasty replies are on their fb everyday. More so than KLM's and other popular FB airlines... I just wonder, why they deliver such a fair product inflight, but seem to leave the administrative side to such an amateur-like level.

Listen to their telephone centre in Istanbul. The waitinglines are horrible, the english is with heavy accent (instead of having it done in a studio by pro's, seems hobo-like for such a huge airlines) and it takes you AGES to actually get to some personell unless u wish to buy a flight and ONLY that... Luckily for me, i've been fortunate to avoid problems with my flights with them.

Ironically, I just raked in over the 40000+ miles with them, gold status they say. So I wonder what awaits me servicewise. I hope they do improve on the "help"side of things. I cant complain except for a long wait and no reply from them on the phone today. But seems they don't really care about the individuals outside miles&smiles on their FB. They just post a turkish phonenumber for their helpline and tell you to call that. On delta, klm, the likes, you get a proper response to even the slightest request, and sometimes to the big and hard ones too... Must say i've enjoyed their service inflight though! Plus the amazing food!

Quoting ASA (Reply 18): take Central Asia. You could hardly find an EK or QR destination there ... but the region is spectacularly covered by TK. Similarly, for eastern Europe or the Balkans .

I always wondered about that. Why did Dubai decide on setting up flydubai, which has concentrated on those areas, rather than just send EK? While there is some overlap in the Middle East and South Asia, flydubai serve 22 destinations in 10 countries that EK don't.

Quoting Quokkas (Reply 22):Quoting ASA (Reply 18):
take Central Asia. You could hardly find an EK or QR destination there ... but the region is spectacularly covered by TK. Similarly, for eastern Europe or the Balkans .

I always wondered about that. Why did Dubai decide on setting up flydubai, which has concentrated on those areas, rather than just send EK? While there is some overlap in the Middle East and South Asia, flydubai serve 22 destinations in 10 countries that EK don't.

TK has very good coverage in the area as a lot of those Central Asian countries have historical and cultural links to Turkey - or the other way around. I doubt the likes of EK or QR would have been as successful in the region, apart from a couple of destinations here and there. The location of the IST hub is also ideal for attracting passengers from the Balkans (where local air service is regional at best) and E Europe.

[Edited 2012-11-15 18:40:21]

25 JOYA380B747
: Or for that matter AI's soon to come LHR/CDG/FRA-DEL-MEL/SYD But why not? TK could always do a Kangaroo routing because who wouldn't like to hop over